Over and Over
by bloomingauthor7
Summary: Angsty songfic. Please read, I worked really hard on this one! By the way so did Phyco Girl! Huge thanks for an AWESOME, two hour beta job! Love ya!


_"What's wrong with you? What do you owe him?__" Percy's voice trembled with anger__his fists balling __menacingly__. "__He's a traitor, and a monster, and a hypocrite, and he doesn't __even __care about you, so w__hy __should __you care so much? This isn't about Luke! This__ is about saving Western Civiliz__ation, remember? __You can't save everyone!"_

_"I'__m sorry, alright! I'm sorry__."_

Annabeth bolted, blonde curls swinging behind her. Her cabin was empty, but she locked the door before throwing herself on the bed and burying her face in her arms, breathing in the musty smell of her pillow.

**I fee****l it everyday it's all the same**

**It brings m****e down but I'm the one to blame**

**I've tried every****thing to get away **

**So here I go again **

**Chasing you down again **

**Why do I do this?**

Percy was right. This had stopped being about saving the world for her a long time ago. She knew she shouldn't want to save Luke. She knew he was a traitor who deserved what Thalia tried to give him. So why did she keep wanting to chase him down, to save him, to change his ways?

**Over and over, over and over**

**I fall for you**

**Over and ****over;**** over and over**

**I try not to**

_I shouldn't love you._Blinking back the hot, red ache behind her eyelids, Annabeth remembered something. She pulled a shoebox from among the pile of books under her camp bunk. Lifting the lid, she saw what she was looking for. They were pictures; maybe a hundred, of the time before she had known Luke for what he really was. There were pictures of Luke, Thalia and her seven-year old self on their journey to camp; some taken in front of landmarks, some just shots they had snuck while nobody was looking. There were a few from her first year or so at camp, when Luke had still been her best friend. She picked one up, a picture of Luke and her at archery practice.

**It feels like everyday stays the same**

**It's dragging me down and I can't pull away**

**So here I go again**

**Chasing you down again**

**Why do I do this?**

She tried one last time to hold back the tears, but they splashed over the shining paper as her hands pulled it apart down the middle. She ripped Luke out of the photo and began to shred apart his tanned body, his charming smile, the clean face as it had looked before there was a horrible scar running down it. The aura of light and joy had radiated out of him. Everyone, from his father down to the naiads, had admired his incredible, practically luminous _goodness_; and that little girl she had been had eaten it up with eyes wide. The pieces grew smaller and smaller, and it got harder and harder to see through the ocean of tears swimming before her pupils. She pulled out another picture.

**Over and over, over and over**

**I fall for you**

**Over and over, over and over**

**I try not to**

**Over and over, over and over**

**You make me fall for you**

**Over**** and over, over and over**

**You don't even try**

_Why won't you leave me alone? _She screamed silently as she reached into her pocket. She pulled an older, dusty camp pillow from under the bed and carefully placed the second picture on it: a Polaroid head shot of his boyishly grinning, kind, golden-child face. And then, practically shuddering with anger, she pulled out her bronze knife. She stabbed downward over and over into his face, and then onto the rest of the photo until the paper had mostly fallen to pieces. Then she started on the pillow, pretending it was his traitorous, tainted, double-crossing body. She slashed downward so the filling of the pillow started to spill out, but she still kept piercing the innocent cloth, the tears spilling down and wetting the translucent innards of the pillow, disappearing into the masses of gauzy carnage. She kept at it for several minutes; by the time she was done, the pillow was reduced to a pile of fabric shreds and fluff. Finally, she threw the blade down and pressed her fingers to her temples, frowning furiously, as if trying to press him out of her head by force.

**So many thoughts ****that I can't get out of my head**

**I try to live without y****ou, every time I do I feel dead**

**I know what's best for me**

**But I want you instead**

**I'll keep on wasting all my time**

She knew what Percy felt for her, and she knew that she was hurting him, hurting herself, and that she should just let it go and move on. In fact, she'd thought she had. When he had poisoned Thalia's tree, she'd mistaken anger for hatred, or indifference. Untroubled, she'd thought she had finally forgotten the feelings she had harbored for so long. Then he had spared her life, when the General had wanted to cast her aside like yesterday's leavings, and she held onto that shred of false hope like a lifeline. And then there was the look on his face as he pleaded with Thalia. It almost let her believe this wasn't the real Luke; that somewhere beneath his cold, cruel exterior the warm, lighthearted boy she loved still existed. She'd begun to wonder whether the old Luke, the one she had loved, one she'd known since long ago, was still there, beneath the web of treachery Kronos had spun.

_You're being stupid! How many times does he have to hurt you before you give up?__Or will he have to kill you first?_**Over and over, over and over**

**I fall for you**

**Over and over, over and over**

**I try not to**

**Over and over, over and over**

**You make me fall for you**

**Over and over, over and over**

**You don't even try to**

So here she was, back at square one, and she was beginning to doubt she'd ever be over him, really. She doubted she would ever be happy with Percy or anyone else until she could save Luke. She'd spend the rest of her life chasing him down, and the funny part was that he could never be happy either. He didn't want her; he never had. He wanted the dark-haired girl who'd sworn an oath of maidenhood to an auburn-haired goddess; an oath that could never be broken. She knew she'd always love him, more than he could ever understand or appreciate, and more than she could ever love anyone else. She knew if she could just make him listen, she could salvage the old Luke, the brave, unruffled fourteen-year-old she'd fallen for. Unless that was just the gods-cursed hubris kicking in again… here she went again thinking that she could do anything, save anyone. And she realized that this was the same flaw which had made that boy so long ago disappear.


End file.
